Now that IBM's Deep Blue computer beat the world's greatest human chess player, Gary Kasparov, this book will see if a story can be written better by a human or a machine.

This book marks the marriage of logic and creativity.

While it may be true that incompatible humans often wed, there are doubtless unions of a less palpable sort that can never even come to pass. Such is the case, by the lights of many, for precisely what we are about herein. Creativity and logic? Married? Upon hearing of our plans, 7 years ago, to harness theoremproving technology in order to create a computer program able to generate belletristic fiction, a rather famous novelist informed us that creativity and logic are as far apart as the east is from the west (and he proudly quipped that even such a metaphor is beyond logic, and hence beyond machines). Just an anecdote, yes, and just the opinion of one, but the truth of the matter is that this attitude is widely (and often fiercely) affirmed. Creativity is generally regarded to involve breaking the kind of rigid rules standing at the heart of logic; creativity, at least of the artistic variety, is commonly identified with the emotions and the “irrational.” Freud, whose specific claims are today a bit tenuous, remains a seminal figure for often getting at least the tenor of things right. Freud believed that creativity is the link between art and play, and requires the “suspension of rational principles.” He wrote that “The creative writer does much the same as the child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously — that is, which he invests with large amounts of emotion — while separating it sharply from reality” ([93], p. 144). However problematic Freud's rather dark theories may be today, here he is simply making an observation that cannot be doubted. But the issue is whether such sophisticated play can in the end be reduced to logic. Is the play of Joyce and Tolstoy and Updike and Helprin and Morrison at bottom logic in action?